“And why did he curse you, Lady?”
“For this reason: While we wandered in the wilderness, Tikal, my cousin and my betrothed, took a wife, your daughter Nahua, who was crowned with him as Lady of the Heart. But it seems, Mattai, that though he gave your daughter place and power, he gave her no love, for to-day this son-in-law of yours came to my father, and in the presence of us all offered to set him in his lawful place again and to suffer him to carry out his schemes, whatever they might be, if I would but consent to become his wife.”
“To become his wife!” said Mattai, in amazement. “How could you become his wife when he is married? Can there then be two Ladies of the Heart?”
“No,” answered Maya quietly, “but the proposal of Tikal, my cousin, is, that he should either put away or kill your daughter—and you with her, Mattai—in order that he may set me in her place.”
Now when Mattai heard this his quick eyes flashed, and his very beard seemed to bristle with rage.
“He proposed that! He dared to propose that!” he gasped. “Oh! let him have a care. I set him up, and perchance I can pull him down again. Continue, Lady.”
“He proposed it, and my father agreed to the offer, for, knowing that you have plotted against him, he had little care for the honour and safety of you or of your house, Mattai. But if my father accepted, I refused, seeing that it is not my wish to have more to do with Tikal. Then my father cursed me, and while he cursed was stricken down.”
“You say it is not your wish to marry Tikal, Lady. Is it, then, your wish to marry any other man?”
“Yes,” she answered, letting her eyes fall, “I love this white lord here, whom you name Son of the Sea, and I would become his wife. I would become his wife,” she went on after a pause, “but, Mattai, Tikal is very strong, and it may be, unless I can find help elsewhere, that in order to save the life of the man I love, of his friend and mine, Ignatio, and my own, I shall be forced into the arms of Tikal. But now Tikal has asked me for my answer, and I have told him that I will give it when my father is recovered or dead. Perhaps it will be for you to say what that answer shall be, for alone and in prison I am not strong enough to stand against Tikal. Say, now, do the people love me well enough to depose Tikal and set me in my father’s place, should he die?”
“I cannot say, Lady,” he answered shortly, “but at the least you will scarcely ask me thus to bring about my own and my daughter’s ruin. I will be open with you. I gained over the Council of the Heart to Tikal’s cause, and my price was that he should marry my daughter, thereby satisfying her love and my ambition. Yes, I have plotted to set Nahua on high, both for her sake and for my own, seeing that after the cacique I sought to be the chief man in the city. Can I, then, turn round and depose him, and my daughter and myself with him? And if I did, what would be my fate at your hands in the days to come? No, I seek to be revenged on Tikal, indeed, who has offered so deadly an affront to me and mine, but it must be in some other way than this. Tell me now, lady, what is it that you desire most,—to be the cacique of this city by your right of birth, or to marry the man you love?”